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MOSES AND WASHINGTON. 



A DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED TO 



THE STUDENTS OF WABASH COLLEGE, 



FEBRUARY Qlst, 18«-4, 



BY 



REV. JOSEPH F. TUTTLE, D. D. 



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MOSES ASD WASHINGTON. 



A DISCOURSE. 



DELIVERED TO 



THE STUDENTS OF WABASH COLLEGE, 



FEBRUARY Slst,, 186^, 



BY 



KEY. JOSEPH F. TTJTTLE, D. D. 



|!ublislub bji SuRabasIj Paga§hw 2Usocration.. 



< CINCINNATI 



GAZETTE STEAM PRINTING HOUSE, FOURTH AND VINE STREET; 
18 64. 



DISCOURSE. 



"And there -arose not a prophet mdco in Israel like unto Moses." — Deut. 34:10. 

Moses is thus singled out from among all the great prophets 
of Israel and declared to be the greatest of them all. In the 
same strain he was called ''the man of God." The promised 
Messiah was compared to him, and by a sort of common con- 
sent he has come to be regarded not only as the greatest of Is- 
raelites but the greatest of men. It is not necessary here to 
discuss the question which seeks to decide how much of his 
greatness was due to the direct inspiration of God. It is 
enough to say that no man can be either small or great who 
is not so in consequence of God's imparted gifts, so that it 
were as really a folly to seek to detract from the claim of Mo- 
ses as the greatest of great men because 'he became so by the 
gifts of inspiration as it would to take the purple from the re- 
gal shoulders of Shakspeare, because he received his genius 
from God. To the humblest glow-worm, to the lowliest flow- 
eret, to the feeblest intellect as truly as to such imperial souls 
as Isaiah and David, and Paul, and Shakspeare, and Newton, 
and Moses, the greatest of them all, it might be truly said, 
•'What hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now if thou 
didst receive it why dost thou glory as if thou hast not re- 
ceived it ?"— 1. Cor., 4:7. 

I trust that it may not be unprofitable to discuss the greatness 
of Moses in order to ascertain what were some of its marked 
elements. 



filoses and Washington. 



The First element which I notice is the strength and equi- 
poise of his mental faculties — and their perfect subjugation to 
his will. Here notice the strength of his faculties as contrast- 
ed with weakness. There is no point in his momentous histo- 
ry which does not illustrate the natural gifts of his mind. As 
a lawgiver, as a reasoncr, as the deviser of the largest plans 
as a civil ruler, as a military leader, as a poet, the man stands 
before us in all the grandeur of his rare powers. We look at 
him as a student in all the learning of the Egyptians, as a 
man choosing to suffer affliction with his people rather than to 
enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, as an exile in the des- 
ert, amid the sublime silence of Sinai and Horeb communing 
with God, and his own spirit, as a prophet, demanding of Pha- 
raoh the release of his slaves, as the leader of the most sub- 
lime exodus known to history, as the founder of a new nation 
under circumstances of the greatest embarrassment, and yet 
from first to last we detect no sign of weakness in any mental 
faculty. One man is great as a mathematician, another as a 
linguist, a third as a statesman and a fourth as a military 
chieftain, and yet each one may show weakness in the qualities 
which distinguish the rest. Moses was great in every depart- 
ment — he was weak nowhere. 

And then the equipoise of his faculties was- so perfect. If 
we look at his reason alone we might say this is the lock of his 
strength, but when we pass to his conceptive faculties by which 
he brings up truth and combines it into forms and plans we 
might say surely this is his main power. Or we examine his 
imagination as displayed in his Psalm at the Red Sea, or in 
that as he was about to die, or the 90th Psalm written by him, 
or his final discourses to his countrymen as recorded in the 
Book of Deuteronomy, and we find that his imagination is the 
equal of his powers of reason and conception. Neither is su- 
perior to the other. Like three mountains of equal base and 
altitude towering side by side into the serene sky were the 
mental faculties of Moses. Each is great, and yet as compar- 
ing either one withthe- other the casual observer at first is de- 
ceived by the very equality of greatness which he observes. 
If only one were an ordinary mountain, in order touse it as a 



Moses and Washington. 



standard, we could mount up to the grandeur of the rest, but 
to have three Mount Blancs side by side is to deceive the be- 
holder at first into an impression that each is a mountain of 
ordinary size. Thus to illustrate his mental forces by the 
spheres in which they wrought, we look at him as a revolution- 
ist, as a dictator, as the organizer of a new government with a 
system of laws and religion previously unknown, as a historian 
and a man of letters, and Ave find an amazing equality among 
those forces. In the equipoise of his faculties he was truly 
one of the greatest of men. 

And not only in these respects was he great, but to the 
strength and equipoise of bis faculties, we must add their per- 
fect discipline, their entire subjugation to his will. Many a 
man has strong faculties but they are strong as the wild buffalo 
or horse which has not been subdued. Such was the severe 
discipline with which Moses had coerced his faculties into an 
entire obedience that they never failed him in the most trying 
emergencies, whether confronting his dispirited countrymen, 
or their insolent oppressors, whether enacting his sublime part 
at the Red Sea or passing sentence on the rebels who aimed 
their blows at God through him. 

In the strength, equipoise and perfect discipline of his facul- 
ties we have the foundation of that greatness in Moses of which 
I am now discoursing. There was no one-sidedness, no dis- 
proportion, no vagrant fitfulness in his intellectual parts. 

The Second element of his greatness consisted in his relig- 
ious faith and love. This is the splendid supplement to the 
element we have before considered. 

Faith as defining the relations of the soul to a real God has 
every variety of manifestation and every degree of power. I 
will not degrade this noble word by saying that the heathen 
who know not the true God, or those who know of God, but 
either reject or neglect him, have it. Oar liberal philosophers 
of the present day fancy they detect a real faith in the devo- 
tees of Brahma and Buddh, in the life of Socrates and Confu- 
cius, and the bloodless morality of David Hume and Humboldt. 
But the existence of real faith in these cases is impossible be- 
cause its first element is wanting, the knowledge of the true 



31oses and Washington. 



God. Trust in Brahma or in some ideal being, in the cant 
phrase of modern sentimentalism called "the good God" or 
some such name, is not the faith of which the apostle discoursed 
in the eleventh' of his epistle to the Hebrews, when he spake 
of the holy confidence which Abel and Noah and Abraham and 
Moses reposed in the only living and true God. Moses had a 
knowledge of God by an inward experience of his power con- 
straining him to reject the golden bribes which sought to keep 
him loyal to the most polished and powerful court on earth. 
He must have felt that it was not by his own power he made 
that marvelous choice to ho 0113 with the slaves of the court he 
was abandoning. Besides this he had met God in the burning 
bush and had been filled with the deepest reverence for the 
actual God. Indee.l the God on whom his faith reposed was 
no mere creature of the imagination, an ideal being of the poet 
or the artist : God was as real and as true a being as was Mo- 
ses,, of whose presence, power, wisdom and goodness he had as 
real evidence as he had of his own existence. At the burning 
bush, at the Red Sea, in the mount, at the mercy seat, he 
talked with God, as one talks to his friends. 

In such a God Moses believed not with a kilting and half- 
hearted faith but with all his heart. His mighty mental facul- 
ties comprehending. God in all His glory, lie was ready to say 
as Job did, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, 
but now mine eyu seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself in dust 
and ashes." And thus it came to- pass that earth's peerless 
intellect became as a. little child in his relations to the Great 
I Am. There was no boastful impertinence in his approaches 
to God, but this Moses was not only the greatest but he was 
also the meekest of men. 

And what more admirable sight is there in the world than a 
man of great intellect resting on God with all the docility and 
confidence of a little child! Faith in God in the humblest is 
admirable, but there is no less temptation to a wicked self- 
sufficiency in one whose powers are feeble. It seems natural 
fur one who is weak to trust in one who is strong, but when a 
man is endowed with vast powers, having the gift of prophecy, 
understanding all mystery, and all knowledge, he is so flattered 



3Ioscs and Washington. 



by his fellows, so deferred to by his dependents, so superior to 
those about him, that he is tempted to pride and self-sufficiency, 
and even to consider himself a sort of God. How many an 
intellect like La Place has said c * there is no God," or like 
Humboldt has felt that Christ's gospel was good enough for 
common folks, but folly to one so wise and good as he was in 
his own conceit ! 

Moses was as great in his faith as he was in his intellect. 
Both qualities shine with the most brilliant lustre in his life. 

But love was as conspicuous as faith in him. How gentle 
and forbearing he was to his froward countrymen ! When 
they sinned to their own peril, how tenderly does he intercede 
for them ! They were to him as children. To such good men 
as Joshua he was attached by a love too exalted for any mix- 
ture of meanness. But its dearest object was God. What 
fondness, what force of love is shown in all his relations to 
God. He had the most glorious gifts of mind, vast knowledge, 
faith that could remove mountains, he lived for the good of 
others, so that he gave not money but himself for their good, 
and yet with all these splendid qualities he had the crowning 
glory of charity, love to God and man. 

Thirdly and briefly I must add to these elements of Moses' 
greatness his executive talent. 

We have examples of this kind, in which we find great tal- 
ents, and great moral purity, but no distinguished executive 
talent. From the time Moses smote his first blow at a tyrant 
killing him, until he had led his people through incredible diffi- 
culties to the frontiers of the promised land, he manifested the 
highest talent in carrying great plans into execution, the talent 
of realizing in fact the ideas of theory. He never seemed to 
lack resources in conducting that sublime exodus which trans- 
formed a nation of dispirited slaves into a great intelligent na- 
tion, destined to be the wonder of all coming time, the marvel 
of history. 

Let us now look over our synopsis of the elements which 
enter into the greatness of Moses. His talents were of the 
highest order — they were strong, they were perfectly balanced, 
they were disciplined into the most complete subjugation to his 



8 Moses and Washington. 

will; his faith 'in God was of that sort that it realized not 
merely the being but the presence of God in such a sense that 
all apparent odds against him were nothing at any time because 
God was on his side ; his love to God and to man like a blessed 
master passion controlled and characterized him in his motives, 
his words, and his actions ; and to conclude the enumeration, 
his executive abilities, his gifts, as the realizer of ideas into 
facts, his gifts as a leader, were of so distinguished a character 
that we are justified in averring him so far as these elements 
go to have been the greatest of men. 

Fourth. Moses had the opportunity for the exercise of his 
talents. In all practical greatness may be detected the element 
of opportunity. Had all the facts in astronomy been known 
as they are now known before Gallileo, Copernicus, Kepler and 
Newton demonstrated the principles of that science, these men 
might have possessed all the gifts which are credited to them, 
but the want of an opportunity to use these talents would have 
consigned them to a grave over which a grateful and admiring 
world would have raised no monuments more lasting than brass. 
The same is true of all distinguished inventors and discoverers. 
What would have been Franklin or Watt, or Stevenson, or Ful- 
ton, or Whitney, or Daguerre, with all their talents, but with- 
out that important faet which we call opportunity ? What 
would Alexander have been without a world to conquer? or 
Mirabeau without any revolutionary forces to be subdued and 
directed ? or Cromwell in the peaceful reign of Victoria ? Mere 
talent is nothing without opportunity for its exercise. 

This element of greatness was not lacking to Moses. He 
was born just at the day-break of the most thrilling events. 
Facts more wonderful than romance attended his early child- 
hood and education at a court on which he was to inflict the 
vengeance of God. He had the opportunity — rarely if ever 
accorded to another — to make that immortal preference of afflic- 
tion with God's enslaved people, over all the pleasures which a 
rich, polished, and powerful court could offer. He was able to 
take the side of the oppressed in a magnificent way sacrificing 
all he had in the noble work. Then came the opportunities to 
commune with nature, with God, and his own soul in the desert, 



Moses and Washington. 



in order to be ready for the crisis which in due time would 
come to his countrymen in bonds. These were only the prep- 
aration for the opportunity of his life. In due time God sum- 
moned him now in his ripened manhood to go to the Israelites 
and proclaim the hour of deliverance, and to confront the 
haughty king with command, with menace and with plague, to 
compel him to let his slaves leave the house of bondage. How 
he rises in dignity at every step ! What a worthy ambassador 
he was from the Great King to the tyrant! how incomparably 
superior docs he appear to the royal wretch whom he is lashing 
from one concession to another, and from one agony to another, 
until we see him involved in the waters of the Sea, and his ad- 
versary with his mystic rod commanding the eager waves to 
spring upon him and his host. 

In all this Moses had the opportunity for the conspicuous 
display of his gifts, and yet when he raised that triumphal 
psalm on the shore of the Red Sea, his real work was only be- 
gun. See what he had in hand. He was the leader of three 
millions of people, six hundred thousand of whom were men. 
They were an immense mob of recently liberated slaves. They 
were not trained Avarriors, and yet with them he was to subdue 
several warlike and hostile nations. They were such children 
in knowledge that it Avas necessary for Moses to regulate their 
internal affairs on principles of equity, before the publication 
of statute laws. They were infected with the vices and idola- 
try of the Egyptians, and Moses had the tremendous work in 
hand first to purge them of these Egyptian taints, and second- 
ly to give them a divine religion in a form adapted to their 
wants during the journey and when they should be established 
in the promised land. Closely connected with this last and 
combined with it, constituting the most sublime work of his 
life, was the production of a law which should be the seed of 
all right laws, for all peoples, and times, and the adaptation of 
that law to the present and future wants of the new nation. 

Now trace him step by step from the desert to Pharaoh's 
court, thence to the Red Sea, thence to Sinai, and thence ''unto 
the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah " whence he 
saw with quickened vision the promised land, and you will 



10 Moses and Washington. 

see how peerless was the opportunity which he had for the 
exercise of his peerless gifts. And so well did he exercise 
his gifts and embrace his opportunity that both gifts 
and opportunity conspired to place him without a rival on 
the highest summit of earthly greatness. His gifts, his 
opportunity and success, in all their magnificent details 
and aggregate, fully warrant the glowing eulogy with which 
some inspired pen closed the history which Moses him- 
self had almost finished. " And there arose not a prophet since 
in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face." 

You will agree with me in admitting that when any high ex- 
igency arises the great man who is able to fill it is one of the 
greatest blessings. This is true in the domains of science, lit- 
erature, and especially in those crises which determine the fate 
of nations. It is true that God can work by feeble means, and 
that he sometimes does so. The noisy cackling of geese once 
saved Rome, but usually Rome was saved not by geese but by 
men like Fabius, or Brutus, or Sc ; pio, or Cicero. It is possible 
for God to have settled the doctrinal formulas of Christianity 
by the pen of an unlettered fisherman, but in fact He did it by 
the pen of the educated Saul of Tarsus. Occasionally great 
national deliverances are effected by some gifted soul who has 
had very little training for such a destiny. Such was that 
wonderful man, Toussaint Louverture, the hero of St. Domin- 
go. Such are the exceptions. The men whom providence 
designates to deliver nations usually are not only highly 
endowed by nature but by education also. The leader of the 
Jewish Exodus, and the expounder of the christian system, 
were men trained by divine providence for the work in hand. 

The gratitude of Israel to Moses as the great man who led 
them from the house of bondage to the promised land was so 
great as to be likely to run into idolatry. Hence his grave 
was concealed from them, and who ever heard of a Jew so rec- 
reant to the holy and stirring traditions of his nation at the 
time of the Exodus as not to pronounce the name of Moses 
with peculiar veneration as their greatest prophet, their great- 
est deliverer, their greatest man ? In this they do right. 



Moses and Washington. 11 



No great man should be forgotten especially when exalted 
goodness was combined with that greatness, and most especially 
when such a man had the opportunity to do great things for a 
nation or mankind at large and successfully improved it. 

I am sure that no one in this intelligent audience will blame 
me for giving these remarks a bearing on the fact that to-mor- 
row is a day very precious in our American calendar, as the 
birth day of Washington. As the instructor of young men 
in such times as these, I am not willing to suffer such an op- 
portunity to pass without distinctly calling attention to the 
character of the Father of his Country. Not educated at a 
royal court he was schooled in the most exalted morality by 
his noble mother and by contact with the good people of his 
native land. His early training inspired him with a manly vir- 
tue and goodness. His mental faculties were strong by nature 
and they were thoroughly disciplined and subjugated. Patrick 
Henry before the war of Revolution thought him the greatest 
man in America. His faculties Avere in wonderful equipoise 
and harmony. In him were blended faith and love. The very 
places near his headquarters at Valley Forge, and, on the 
heights in New Jersey which overlook that magnificent scene 
of Avood and meadow, valley and mountain, river and bay, to- 
Avards NeAV York are pointed out Avhere in the darkest hours 
of the AA r ar he Avas accustomed to boAV before God, thence 
coming with that serenity which no calamity or reverse could 
disturb. And the very spot is still consecrated as in a sense 
holy, ground Avhere he partook of the Lord's Supper in a grove 
at the hands of good Dr. Johnes, the sign that his faith rested 
in Christ, the Avorld's Saviour. And Avhat a splendor there was 
in that benevolence which he displayed in serving his country, 
and in vindicating the freedom of man ! These qualities were 
made in the highest degree effective by his vast executive abil- 
ity. Great in mental faculties, great in faith, and in love, he 
AA-as also great in action. God allowed a man thus splendidly 
endoAved, to have an opportunity such as is rarely, if ever af- 
forded to any one. Our nation in the face of fearful odds was 
stru<Min(T for life, and a great man Avas needed for the crisis. 
God marked out Washington as that great man. With un- 



12 Moses and Washington. 

feigned diffidence he assumed the tremendous responsibilities 
of the position, and during" seven years he carried our nation 
in his great manly bosom as Moses did Israel. He was weak 
no where — neither at the council board, nor at the head of ar- 
mies, neither with his pen, nor with his sword, neither as a 
chieftain heading a momentous revolution, nor as a chief mag- 
istrate when the nation's independence was achieved. No 
suspicions ever clouded his spotless fidelity to God, and his 
country, no bribes ever corrupted him, no temptations overcame 
him. Great in mind, great in faith, great in benevolence, 
great in fidelity, great in war, great in peace, great in life, 
great in death, great in history, Washington stands before us 
to-day in his hitherto unmatched excellencies and we may truly 
say that thus far there has arisen no such man in our country 
as he. 

Our country is now passing through a fearful crisis, and 
whilst the motives are numerous and powerful to the noblest 
patriotism, the occasions are not wanting to the basest corrup- 
tion and treason. The distribution of so many lucrative and 
important offices, and the sustentation of such vast armies and 
navies, afford the opportunities to the bad to be as corrupt as 
possible. Some have not been slow to embrace these occasions. 
May the execrations of their fellow citizens follow them ! 

But I am bold to say this is not the general rule. Never 
was patriotism more honored in practice than now, else how 
shall we account for the vast preponderance of voluntary en- 
listments over enforced drafts, or the readiness with which, 
with only a few execrable exceptions, our people have carried 
a heavy taxation, and in addition poured out on our soldiers 
and their families such an affluence, such a munificence of pri- 
vate beneficence as was never paralleled in any other age or 
nation, or the thrilling spectacle of our veterans scarred with 
wounds, and covered with glory, which their retirement to their 
homes at the close of their enlistment could not diminish, yet 
almost in a mass once more laying themselves on their country's 
altar for another term ? 

I am proud of my country as I never was before. Her dan- 
ger endears her to me, and to day with this war on her I love 



Moses ami Washington. 13 



her above my chief earthly joy. I am proud of my country- 
men as represented in the army and navy — which are defending 
our very existence and asserting the rights of other generations. 
God bless our braves on the land and on the water ! And yet 
now in these perilous struggles it will do every soldier, and 
every sailor, and every lover of our country, whether father, 
or mother, or son, or daughter, or brother, or sister, good to 
turn their eyes away to that august form which stands before 
us in the person of Washington. Ah ! how will the contem- 
plation tend to drive away every unworthy feeling, each low 
ambition, each paltry rivalry, as we behold the life of such a 
man ! 

To you, young men, in the most emphatic terms I commend 
his character. You are coming on to the stage in perilous 
times when the blackest and biggest treason the world ever 
saw is trying to stab our country to the heart. The masses of 
our countrymen are loyal and this harmony in loyalty will be 
more and more apparent until the time will come when every 
man would sooner tear his tongue out, than to allow it to speak 
a treasonable word. The example of "Washington inculcates 
on you the duty of moderation so long as that is a virtue, but 
when it ceases to be such, the same illustrious example bids us 
strike down treason with mailed hands, to strike it with all our 
might, even though it should hide itself in the innermost sanc- 
tuary of home. 

But the rebellion totters, the light is breaking through the 
black storm, reason is returning to the rebels ; the day of an 
assured peace is not distant, a. peace of that sort that neither 
Massachusetts nor South Carolina, neither New York nor Tex- 
as, neither North nor South nor East nor West shall dare to 
disturb it. and out of these fiery tribulations, we shall come a 
nation in such a sense as we were never a nation before. And 
then one name shall spontaneously rise to every lip, the name 
of Washington, and with that illustrious name we will associ- 
ate that of every true patriot who in these days of peril has 
done what Washington did, wrought to the full measure of his 
ability for the salvation of his country ! 



14 Moses and Washington. 

Patriots have toiled and in their country's cause 
Bled nobly ; and their deeds as they deserve 
Receive proud recompense. We give in charge 
Their names to the sweet lyre. The historic muse 
Proud of the treasure marches with it down 
To latest times ; and Sculpture in her turn 
Gives bond in stone and ever during brass 
To guard them and to immortalize her trust. 



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